SingleStore vs Vespa: Vector Databases Comparison

SingleStore is a real-time, unified, distributed SQL database that combines transactional, analytical, and vector data workloads in a single platform. MySQL and MongoDB wire protocol-compatible, SingleStore enables organizations to scale from one to one million customers, handling SQL, JSON, full text, and vector workloads all in one unified platform. Unlike traditional vector databases, SingleStore stores vector data in relational tables alongside other types of data, allowing easy querying of extended metadata and other attributes with the full power of SQL. The system supports both semantic search using FLAT, IVF_FLAT, IVF_PQ, IVF_PQFS, HNSW_FLAT, and HNSW_PQ vector indexes, with dot product and Euclidean distance for similarity matching. Founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco, SingleStore serves hundreds of customers including 100+ Fortune 500, Forbes Global 2000, and Inc. 5000 brands. The company was acquired by Vector Capital in September 2025.

Vespa is an AI-powered search platform for developing and operating large-scale applications that combine big data, vector search, machine-learned ranking, and real-time inference. Originally developed at Yahoo and spun out as an independent company in 2017, Vespa enables real-time AI applications like RAG, recommendation, and intelligent search at enterprise scale. The platform features native tensor support for complex ranking and decisioning, with capabilities including vector and tensor search with any number of vector fields, true positional text indexes with detailed text match features, and hybrid search combining structured filters, full-text retrieval, and vector similarity in a single query. Vespa can scale to billions of constantly changing data items, handling thousands of queries per second with latencies below 100 milliseconds. Based in Trondheim, Norway, Vespa raised $31M in Series A funding in November 2023.